


Misrule

by Black_throatedBlue



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Masks, Masquerade Ball, Misrule, Sounds like I'm doing an alphabet prompt, missing year, oq week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:56:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3324953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_throatedBlue/pseuds/Black_throatedBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“No taking the masks off, no kissing, no names. This one night only.”</p>
<p>Regina finds the man with the lion tattoo, fittingly enough, on a night when the world's upside-down. She means to know this too, and choke on it. </p>
<p>(Missing Year. OQ Week 2x1: Masquerade Ball.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misrule

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: The King of the Bean is an old Misrule tradition in which a cake is eaten which contains one pea and one bean. Whoever gets the slice with the bean in it (if male) is King of the Bean, whoever gets the pea (if female) is Queen of the Pea, and they are temporary rulers of festivities while the actual rulers are peasants, as part of the upside-down spirit. If a guy gets the pea or a woman gets the bean they're allowed to nominate someone to stand in their stead, obviously they are meant to nominate someone of the correct gender but it's Misrule so there's a certain amount of anything goes. There is an aspect of sacrificial kingship to it (like the Green Man has for May Day) but that often falls by the wayside nowadays. It's not traditional for Misrules to be masked (although the holly, ivy and mistletoe symbolism is) but Misrule is really a very robust festivity in which rules and natural orders are meant to be inverted or broken, so a masque version is perfectly doable and I'm apparently pretty bad at staying strictly to prompts.

* * *

 

The King sits, crowned in holly, an oak-sprouting carved mask of the Green Man obscuring his face.

 

(It's a bit of a mess, symbolically, but the late Leopold's fondness for masques, Snow's nostalgia, and the King of the Bean's own unthinking expectation that it wouldn't actually be him that won the bean conspired, and there he sits, with little to be done.)

 

His queen sits next to him up on the dais, distinctly and unfortunately male behind a home-made 'scream' mask and ivy crown, the rest of his clothing indicating that he had been attempting a monster of some sort before the vicissitudes of fate and an unlucky pea allowed a male friend to proclaim him the symbol of midwinter femininity, which no one had really cared enough to challenge. A badger has also joined them, a very young one, and it sits on the floor by the King's throne with wide eyes behind a fabric mask, fascinated, fingers picking at the King's boot laces.

 

Regina's own mask is fairly unobtrusive, unusually, but then she is here somewhat under sufferance. She reaches the front of the quickly moving and bowing audience line and pauses, full of dark memories and a point to make, and then curtsies deeply, sinking down into her knees with straight back and bowed head and says -

 

“Your majesty.”

 

It's curious, she thinks, she feels like she's floating as she curtsies still, thinking on Snow and courtesies and _playing along_ , the bad memories she might think would swamp her seem another person's life, somehow. She waits pointedly for permission to rise with her mother's phantom hand at her lower back, wondering if she is the only one to show due deference to a king, even a mock one, even in mock herself, and Mayor Mills of Storybrooke, with a young son missing and her feet firmly on the ground, plays at curtsies as though she never sat throned, stifled under ermine and sceptre and crown.

 

The King still doesn't give her permission to rise, and when she raises her head slightly at the pause he is staring at her unblinking, so she raises her eyebrows too.

 

“Your -” the King starts, sounding surprised, and drifts off, and if there was ever any doubt as to the identity of the familiar stocky body and blue eyes of the newly-crowned King of the Bean here is proof – who else, here, pays courtesy to her so readily he cannot think how to call her when she plays at peasant?

 

“ _Milady_ , please rise,” he says hurriedly, humour fled from his face, and she does so, and Snow is appeased.

 

 

* * *

He comes to her later, but then she might have expected that.

 

“You've not been given a Misrule task?”

 

She doesn't curtsey this time. “I'd thought you were wiser – apparently I was wrong.”

 

He considers her for a long moment and it stresses her to wait, though she is loathe to admit it, and she hates Misrule with a passion that she is susceptible once more to another ruler's whims.

 

“Dance with me.”

 

She laughs in relieved surprise. “ _That's_ your command as king? To dance with a woman who hates you?”

 

“No, it's an invitation. For my command I think... if you accepted my request, you would lead, and I would follow. I don't know the women's steps and Misrule tasks are not generally supposed to be so pleasant.”

 

“I don't dance.”

 

He smiles. “Well then, it won't make much difference that we're dancing the wrong steps, now will it?”

 

* * *

 

They must look ridiculous in their dance and she pushes down the unsettling remembrance of embarrassment and shame, again, within these walls, though she knows it was meant as a kind command.

 

He is not so much taller, thanks to her shoes, and when she lifts her arm to let him twirl beneath he ducks gladly, fingers twirling on her palm as he spins, as she leans for him and keeps a hand for her skirts to stop him tripping as they move.

 

He is not the most graceful dancer she ever saw, but it does make her smile, slightly, as he steps away from her and spins with a surprised Snow who smiles wide and laughs the women's steps to him, and she can imagine the good humour beneath the mask, even as she and Charming attempt bows at each other.

 

Then he is back, lifting her hands carefully, and she places them on his waist with eyebrows raised, because it is his idea to dance so, and now how is she to lift him for the jump? They fake it, of course, his hands mock-dainty on her shoulders, and she fights back the feeling of team-work and his warm eyes, all around them couples dancing hindered by their own spur-of-the-moment Misrule commands.

 

And then it is time to spin, again, and she does smile at him then, briefly, because there is something honest in him and she is not immune to the laughter around her, and because he has brought her into it so that she is in the mischief as well as just the party, instead of always looking on, and it's something warm and unexpected that she's not used to. He looks to lose his crown as it hooks on her sleeve and she grabs it for him, crowns him again with a slightest head-bow when he turns for it, and then he is spinning quicker to catch up with the music and she breathes a breath of secret laughter because she knows what face he pulls under that wooden mask, refreshingly self-assured as though the watchers do not matter, as though there is only music and his hand spinning a lopsided oval under hers.

 

They dance on, and it is all... something good, she thinks. Happiness she is allowed.

 

* * *

 

It is probably because the switched dance went so well that she does it.

 

The music finishes and she bows to him as he attempts a curtsey, and as he rises he says “Would Milady care for another?”

 

And she says - “Yes.”

 

They dance conventionally, this time, and so minutes later it's her that spins under his raised hand, looking up to see her fingers trace patterns on his skin.

 

She sees his wrist, shirt falling back to bare it, and she stumbles.

 

She pauses.

 

Then she slips her hand back into his and finishes the dance.

 

* * *

 

Regina watches the King offers a masked cheek to the badger he has tucked up on one arm as he leaves to get the badger in bed. There is mistletoe, everywhere, of course, and the hour is getting late for small woodland animals. The badger headbutts the King as much as anything, a big kiss of a thing to bring in the new year, and then they are gone, and Regina pretends she saw nothing at all.

 

She looks away when the King of the Bean and the Queen of the Pea take off their masks for the big ceremony of kissing under the mistletoe, turning as drunken cheers rise to see them vaguely through the crowd playing at fools, the holly King dipping the rangy ivy Queen in a deep theatrical kiss then dipped himself in turn, laughing easily.

 

Regina looks away again, a foolish, stupid idea still circling in her thoughts.

 

It is Misrule, after all.

 

He is King, and she is peasant, and that is all they are.

 

If she wasn't Queen, if she was never Queen, or, perhaps, if one day at a tavern she had been braver and had known how to give up the vengeance that came part and parcel with a crown, how might she then have loved him? How would she then have known him? She doesn't want to know whose right wrist makes her stumble because she already knows too well and it's like barbed wire in her chest, but if she is peasant, if he is king, if he is safely anonymous behind a mask, then she could love him tonight while the world is upside-down and pretend. She wants to know this, too, and choke on it.

 

So it's not that it seems important who the King crowned in holly kisses or doesn't, exactly, that makes her turn away, it's that she doesn't want to have seen his face.

 

* * *

 

“Your majesty.” The King nods to her as he goes to leave, fingers quick with the mask ties behind his head, holly crown discarded.

 

The night is over, her time is up. She follows him.

 

“I would've thought you had more stamina.”

 

He looks back at her, she thinks, with a smile. “Misrule _is_ over.”

 

“Your majesty,” she says, watching his steady eyes in the delicate wooden mask as he stills. “You think you can relinquish a stolen throne so easily?”

 

“Is there any reason why I can't?”

 

“They used to kill the King, once – let the King laugh and command and die in the night, and leave the kingdom come morning to the regicides.” She smiles. “Abdication is never easy.”

 

He steps closer, curious. “Well then I'm grateful for the escape.”

 

_She wants to know this, too, and choke on it._

 

If she bows to him, now, can she steal the truth from him? If he stays King a little longer, can she then be peasant, can she then be thief?

 

She rests a hand on his chest. “Tell me, sire, would you bed a thief?”

 

His forced-out breath is testament to his surprise but she can't tell, eyes fixed on his but the rest of his face obscured by the mask, whether it is in laughter or dismay.

 

When he finds his voice he is serious. “I suppose it would depend on what the thief was stealing, and why.”

 

“And if they stole your virtue?” She says, only half in jest. “Because they have none?”

 

He stares at her still and Regina knows he doesn't understand her in this moment, but he tries, oh how he tries, and she _will_ have him tonight if he will let her.

 

“I had thought certain parties questioned my virtues, tarnished as they are,” he says lightly.

 

“No party ever questioned the anonymous Lord of Misrule.”

 

They stare at each other in the quiet hubbub of a party beginning to disperse, and he shifts once, twice, then steps closer so she is forced to look up at him, air thick between them.

 

“I would bed a thief,” he says, and her heart misses a beat. “I would do it gladly.”

 

* * *

 

As they leave the hall way-layers try to force mistletoe kisses from them – every entrance and exit hung heavy with it – but the King takes one look at Regina bristling with impatience and waves the requirement as his last royal decree. He follows her quickly as they leave the revellers, going deep into the castle, into the uninhabited areas, and he must have caught her meaning because he walks silently and does not question as they pass the turn-off for her rooms and she leads him further still.

 

Finally they reach a room she will allow and she unlocks the door with magic hastily, uncomfortable at the blatant lack of anonymity, and then she pulls him in, closing the door behind him, and backs up against the inside of the door-post so that he pulls flush against her, finally.

 

His hands go to the wall on either side of her and she shifts, displeased, wrapping arms around his neck to pull him closer. She would kiss him, if this happened any other way, but his face is only a mask.

 

Instead she presses against him and he seems to sink into it, feeling each other's bodies with their own for the first time, and then he groans, deep in his chest, hands rising, and she knows he means to kiss her.

 

“No,” She grabs his hands to his head where he reaches for the tie, the first shock of skin on skin, “No taking the masks off, no kissing, no names. This one night only, a secret never to be repeated.”

 

It stops him and he frowns. “This is what you want?”

 

“This is what I want.”

 

He pauses and she prays he will not push for more.

 

Then his hands are finally on her, firmly on her waist and lowering to her hips, and she sighs gratefully, turns into him, presses her back up against him away from the wall and lets his hands smooth around her and across the brocade of her stomach, one rising almost unconsciously to her breastbone, possessive. She is hungry for it, hungry for touch as ever but also for the stolen knowledge of specifically how he touches, and how he might touch her if things were different, and she sinks into him, running fingers lightly along his until the hand on her breastbone is wrapped warm and welcome around her breast and she can sigh into it, nipples tightening, his other hand smooth and sure on the clothing of her upper thighs.

 

She feels odd – hurried and unhurried, somehow at once – but he seems to catch her mood, and he moves slowly, hands roaming as though they've known her for years, offering her the mock intimacy she's so curious for wrapped in a familiarity that makes no sense. 

 

Or every sense, considering. 

 

He moves slowly, but even now his wrist is pressed to her breastbone, and her head swims with the reality of who he truly is to her and that she refuses to know him, and when she clasps a hand around that wrist her heart beats nearly out of her chest with a growing hunger that feels like panic.

 

She twists in his arms, meaning to kiss him and remember how to forget, but it is a mask that greets her so she pushes him towards the bed, instead, pulling his shirt from his belt hungry for skin and hands under clothes rather than over them, hungry for a distraction from fear and identities. He reaches for the buttons at her waist, insistent fingers seeking out hidden clasps in the fabric, but she pulls at his shirt instead until his arms are out of operation, the two of them getting it over his head without dislodging the mask, her eyes flicking away uncomfortably from his right wrist as it is bared. With nothing but broad naked chest in front of her, she strokes him, fingers tracing lines of muscle and flicking over nipples, fascinated, but then he's reaching for her buttons again and she steps backwards sharply.

 

“No names,” she repeats, as he looks at her quizzically.

 

He nods. “I remember.”

 

If there were a less flashy way of doing it, she would, but they would be here for hours with corsets and fasteners she hasn't bothered undoing the usual way for decades, and she has no desire to feel like a prisoner in her own clothes tonight.

 

With as little purple smoke as possible her clothes are gone, completely, and she stands before him naked, chilled in the unheated air.

 

He breathes like he's seen the world ended as he stares at her, stilled, but in this she's never been self-conscious and she steps to him confidently, body burning under his gaze, reaches for his belt again and soon he is naked as well.

 

He goes willingly when she pushes him back onto the bed and straddles him, her hands as hungry with his shoulders and neck as his are with her waist and hips, but it is faltering, not being able to kiss him, not being able to lick or bite as her instincts tell her, so she rocks idly on the pressure of his growing erection, hungry for his body heat, too, and welcome pressure, and runs fingers through his hair, eyes closed when he pulls her forward and explores her breasts with gentle hands, flicking and measuring, making her gasp.

 

She's pulled from the haze of sensation by the sound of his voice.

 

“I must confess, I find it somewhat inhibiting to lose the use of my mouth.”

 

He's staring at her breasts, she realises, her collarbone, her neck, her mouth, but his eyes are friendly when they meet hers.

 

She picks up her rocking again, happy for skin and pressure. “Are you so lacking in ideas?”

 

He does laugh at that, shaking, and it travels through her too, vibrating through through thighs and core and making her stomach clench. “I wouldn't dream of it.”

 

Then he is tracing patterns on her, light touches trailing shivers along the swell of her breast, her waist, the underside of her upper arms, her neck – it seems every-time she knows where he is he's somewhere else, so knowingly and gentle, sending sparks to where he presses warm and insistent between her legs.

 

In return she rocks down, scratching her nails lightly down what she can reach of the back of his shoulders and neck. He huffs in laughter again with it, and she scrapes back up again, smiling to feel his hips twitch under hers, his laughter hitching. She runs her hands along his neck again, drinking in the smooth strong lines of him she pretends she doesn't recognise, as though she doesn't know his voice or personality, his smell now in every breath she takes, his body or the way he moves it, as though he is entirely new to her. It's a ridiculous notion, she thinks as she twists into warm hands low on her hips, she'd know him anywhere.

 

“You're bleeding?” she says, suddenly, reaching up to touch dried blood in his hair.

 

“It's nothing,” he says, head pressing into her touch, “Ro – ...the one who crowned me was a little enthusiastic.”

 

“The holly?” She sits up straighter to look closer, rocking forgotten, pressing harder on his lap.

 

“Yo- _Milady_ ,” he bucks up against her reflexively, then shakes off her hand and ducks forward as though to kiss her before remembering their masks.

 

It's an uncomfortable reminder of just who they are when the world is righted, and she stiffens. “I said no names.”

 

He sighs, hands squeezing her hips, breath loud as it echoes off his mask. “You did. I apologise.”

 

“No harm done,” she says eventually, and wants to kiss him but doesn't.

 

Instead, it takes little time before they collapse back onto the bed properly, full bodies pressed now, legs tangling, and when he rolls her under him she lets herself forget again, careful not to think of the outside world or the past or the future, just the long muscles of his body pressed against hers, a warm present of hands caressing, the whole world filled with want.

 

Then his fingers are clever between her legs, slipping and sure, and she moans unwillingly and knows he smirks behind his mask. Her own hands are no less clever on him, in response, and it is easy to forget her fears when he makes such noises, surprised and pleased, because he may be such a man, to respond with strokes inside that steal her breath, but he is still just only a man, only human.

 

When she takes him within her, finally – when he settles in her with a long slide that seems like reason enough for existing, somehow – her mind is full of first times that will never be repeated, a significance she steals the very knowledge of from him, and she finds it difficult to look at him, turning her head.

 

His hands seem to flutter to her mask of their own accord then and she tenses, thinking he means to unmask her, but he obeys her and never reaches for the ties.

 

Instead he touches the edges of the mask where they rest over her lower cheeks, so softly, and when they return again and again to her jaw with his head tilting above her she knows he wishes above all things to kiss her.

 

She wishes above all things to kiss him too. She won't think of the face behind the mask, the stomach-dropping reality of a man she had liked and felt a pull towards and who saw far too much, could have such a future with her, too much potential and too much hope. But if she feels his touch and gaze on her face as a palpable shiver in her sex and fantasizes about pulling off his mask with quick fingers to see the irritating, intriguing man beneath – to kiss him with all the force of the confusion he raises in her she never _wanted_ – and who could blame her if the face of this man she keeps anonymous has deep lines and scruff and dimples and a face transformed by smiles?

 

For a moment they pause, frozen by need, and his eyes drop from her eyes to her mouth so intense that she is almost made brave with it, almost ready to give up her misery if only he would kiss her, hand reaching for his mask –

 

But he blinks, grimaces, and buries the carved wood of his face in the cradle of her neck with a needy sound high in his throat, whole body pushing against hers as though to make up for the one touch she won't allow them, and he is so heavy and solid and _real_ and alive that she remembers her fear and her hand settles on the back of his neck instead. She arches, pressing into him just as strongly, and holds him to her, fiercely grateful for the pretense and the distance she keeps between them even now.

 

He slides a warm hand up the curve of her waist behind her back and holds her in kind, the need seemingly shared between them, fingers spanned low on her shoulder blades and she ripples with it, surging from where she clenches around him to where she pushes up into him, breasts crushed to his chest and ribcage expanding with a delicious stretch of inhale to feel and know that he is firm and warm around her, _in_ her.

 

His mask shifts against her neck, deeper to the side as he rides her arch, curving with her and thrusting deeper, bowing his neck, and it is a phantom suggestion only but she can only think that with his face turned so he could kiss her neck too, where she is sensitive and hungry for it, that he could kiss and bite and she could arch into that too, and she bares her neck for it yearningly, fruitlessly, body knotted in want for that which she will not allow them.

 

Then she hears muffled words, quiet anyway but indecipherable between her flesh and his mask, and she shivers at the rumble and rise of his chest against hers, thinking longingly of the breath and voice she denies herself too.

 

“What?” she says breathily.

 

He pulls away a little, hand still wide and supportive behind her back as if loathe to let go, a promise, but face wrenched from her neck as though surfacing for air, and all things considered he may very well be.

 

“I said, it really is rather frustrating not being able to kiss you.”

 

The syllables couldn't possibly match.

 

His eyes crinkle. “Admittedly – not in so many words.”

 

She wishes she could kiss him to shut him up, too.

 

She twists her hips, rolls them, to better feel him solid and heavy inside her, something almost like happiness sparking in her heart when he jerks at it and grinds down, swearing, fingers fluttering against her back. He is tight within her anyway, delicious pressure all around, but she likes the unyielding movement of him and manages to twist again, side to side around him, before he groans and slides his hand to her hip and thrusts down hard, pinning her. She wraps her legs around him as if she could pull him deeper still, and she smiles feeling victorious, belly warm and fluttery, when he pulls back to press in better and begins to move in earnest.

 

At first they strive together forcefully, almost quickly, and when she can think of nothing but kissing him and how easy it would be she's glad of it, displacing that desire with curling hips and smoothing hands, whole body shifting on the bed as they move together searchingly. It's almost exactly what she needs, oddly enough, and her lower body heavies quickly as he moves within her, his pale skin everywhere she looks, his muscles rippling under her fingers, the warmth of their bodies shared between them.

 

It consumes her quickly and she works to get closer, to let him move deeper, and he shifts and it is easy, better, and she could stay here forever, right here, near the edge.

 

But it will never happen again.

 

It is a miserable thought and she would kiss him but she has been a coward with this man before and is no less of one now.

 

Instead she strokes his thighs and hips, pulling him to her slower and hips meeting his thrusts with a preferred pace until he matches her, easily, lets her draw it out into something gentle and incremental that this one only time might seem to last forever and that it need not end so soon.

 

It turns out he knows how to take his time.

 

He is steady and certain with his movement, an easy rocking thrust that seems to go on forever, relentless, delicious as he pushes deeper and lovely as he pulls back, and she relaxes with it, almost content.

 

But then his face steadies near her own, for a while, though he doesn't try to kiss her, and at first she doesn't know what he's looking at, his eyes to the side and her peripheral vision blocked by her mask, but when she turns to look her hair pulls slightly and he has a hand in her hair, forearm braced against the mattress, finger and thumb fondling a dark lock. He meets her eyes to feel her looking but seems distant (even as his eyes flicker and his shoulders flex with another thrust) something meaningful about the action he makes no effort to explain, and Regina closes her eyes at this remembrance of imperfection, and tells herself she is glad that he steals from her too, and that it doesn't hurt a bit that her mockery allows this gulf between them.

 

It's his right hand in her hair, after all, his right inner wrist so close to her face.

 

She is not a great emotional liar, though, and when he thrusts again and she wants to cry out with the inexorable mounting pressure she digs punishing fingers into his upper back and shoulders and pulls him to her, tight nipples aching as they brush against his chest, as though she could _make_ him make her accept him.

 

Then he's stroking her cheek with his thumb again, so very softly, head bowed as he pants with exertion. So she cradles his jaw in both hands, and tilts her hips up, tensing within, pulling up his chin to make him look at her, making him tense too and lengthen his spine even as he shudders and fights to push deeper.

 

“Are you alright?” he asks, voice unsteady, shuffling his forearms closer and eyes closing when he bucks full-body into her so that she arches gladly into all that skin again.

 

His face in her palms seems suddenly too intimate instead of not intimate enough, and for all that it emerges halfway to a moan her voice is sharp. “Of course I'm alright.”

 

He thrusts again and it is almost too much, thrill rising through her heavy abdomen.

 

“Please –“ he breaks off with a heavy exhale when she squirms, hips twitching, growing desperate.

 

He bucks deep and hard, then, and she shifts up on the pillow with it, breathless, legs tightening around him as he hits too far deep inside, a wrongful feeling that makes her wince but _such_ a sensation in the getting of it that she is hungry and  ready for more, so _close_.

 

“Please don't lie to me,” he says.

 

She snarls, everything too sensitive. “I never promised you that.”

 

He pauses. Then he almost laughs.

 

“No,” he agrees, fingers pushing through her hair to stroke her scalp and now she is truly breathless because he stares at her too knowingly and too affectionately, too much like the intimacy she fears to crave from him, too much resigned pain with something she might recognise the feeling of. “No, you were very clear about that.”

 

It is too much, suddenly, it is all far too much, and she twists on the bed with the tears in her eyelashes because she is so close and he's so relentlessly steady and every stroke is almost and not-quite and perfect, the pressure stronger with every thrill, and because she is a fool, because she meant to choke on this knowledge and now she knows she'll only drown in the loss of it.

 

“Please,” she begs, voiceless, desperate for him to kiss her, to give up this charade or cling to it she cannot tell, because of course she knows who he is, in every sense, who else could he possibly be? How could she possibly fool herself? It was a mistake to want to know this, she should never have let herself, shivers run through her body making her breasts tingle and her whole face must flush with the almost-pain of it, and she _wants_ -

 

He buries his masked face in her neck again and she welcomes him, terrified, everything happening at once, hands clasped in his hair as his are in hers as though they both know the depth of what she steals from them, as though he knows what they are to one another, and though she knows he couldn't possibly she is antsy with awareness of his right inner wrist so close to her jaw.

 

He cradles her scalp gently in one hand, as though to keep her safe, and shifts his weight, reaching down between them to stroke and make her cry out. She arches, mindless – so close to pleasure and so desperate to flee – and when he speeds up to a rougher, less luxuriating rhythm she keens and moves with it, struggling for air with lungs that can't co-operate, heartsick and hurting and above all desperate to know he's alive, and that he's _real_ , and that she has finally, _hatefully_ , found him.

 

It was a mistake, to want to know this, and later when she arches into him her final time (whole body betraying her until he is laughably, gratefully, her only anchor) she'll know how she will come to suffer for it.

 

* * *

 

When it is over she lets her fingers trail over his wrist, gently touching to make it real in her mind. She would like to believe that there would be a time or a place when she wouldn't run from this and could touch with hope and not sadness, but she knows herself too well and will not be kind nor welcoming come the morning, not when in cold post-coital light she can't even bear to think on who he really is.

 

She glances up from her melancholy to see his eyes open behind the mask, watching her, and for a moment she pauses, wishing she knew how to be happy and how to hope, wishing for Henry.

 

If she were Snow no doubt she'd take off his ridiculous mask and kiss him as she has so longed to do, warm soft mouth opening beneath hers, passionately, revelling in it, embracing him and fearing nothing. If she were Charming she'd say something romantic and equally stupid, she imagines, and if she were her mother she'd already have ripped his heart out. (If she were Emma she'd already have run.)

 

She trails her fingernails lightly at his wrist where her fingers had paused, and after one light circle, two, three, his eyes flutter closed with the sensation and he clears his throat.

 

There is no future, here, for her.

 

* * *

 

(It's Misrule and she dances, almost happy, and in the cradle of his raised hand above her head she sees his wrist and stumbles.

 

She sees the lion tattoo.

 

For a moment, all she can think of is to run, far and fast, because with this man she is a coward and the promise of happiness she won't allow herself is painful.

 

But then, as the oak mask faces her with familiar eyes that know too much, calm and steady as always, she wonders. Could she not pretend for this one night that she does not know who won the bean, with whom she dances? Can she not pretend, on this night of the world turned upside-down, that this is another less dangerous man, and another, less monumental hope?

 

She slips her fingers more firmly into his hand and does not meet his eyes, and dances with an unknown Lord of Misrule with oak on his face and holly as his crown and, oh that she should have found him _now_ , the man with a heraldic charge of a lion sinister on his wrist.

 

Oh that she should have found her soul mate, and that he should be Robin, and that he should be King.)

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback very welcome. :D


End file.
